Early morning, 5:31, still dark and cruising along heading 270° so due west. The ship may be sailing a big rectangle in order to fabricate the “Fun Day at Sea” that they call Wednesday before arriving back at Canaveral early Thursday morning. Thinking this as our fourth and last cruise, Linda and I splurged for a suite about the space of the living room in 7H, plus entryway, dressing room, large bathroom, double-size balcony. Not like the squeeze spaces our last three.  Interesting primary news coverage on the ship’s television yesterday, POOTUS wanting Americans who burn or trample the flag to be deprived of their citizenship or sent to prison. Free speech includes all kinds of protest possibilities, all effectively meant to anger someone who will be outraged, and abusing the flag to get attention and anger somebody is as much an exercise of free speech as sitting or kneeling during the national anthem or defacing the pictures of The Leader that soon will be required in every ho...

No blogpost Monday morning was there, das tut mir leid. Slept until an unheard of six o’clock, and when I came out of the shower Ray and Lillie were here in the room to take us to the wedding ceremony venue. Freeport, Grand Bahama Island is an interesting port of call: don’t go there to shop.  Ride to the beach at the other end of the island was bleak, due to landscape flattening by recent hurricanes, homes with roof shingles missing. Cleveland's Beach Club was bad hit by Hurricane Matthew, the proprietor told me,  but they've recovered sufficient to reopen. It's right on the sea and I had a Kalik beer, 5%, not bad though my taste is to bitter, but not a bad beer, local.  Cruise ship landing at Freeport an industrial area, not downtown at fun shopping like here in Nassau, where five cruise ships are here in port with us today: two Disney ships, two Royal Caribbean, and our ship, Carnival Valor. Pleasant weather, nice square right here at the port, with...

Seven and a piece hours driving, including lunchtime stop at Texas Roadhouse in Gainesville, yielding absolute, total collapse into bed exhaustion, not at all a good octogenarian Saturday. Televisions in TR had the Michigan game on, score 3-0 Michigan at the time before we headed on down the highway. Hint: don’t get overly excited when the score is three-oh, and don’t order the “country fried tenderloin steak” I mistakenly anticipated was going to be real Texas chicken-fried steak, ‘twarn't. Fool me once. 27-30 and 13-31, 'twarn't no good football Saturday neither.  On the drive down yesterday, at least we weren’t heading the other direction on Florida’s Turnpike, mile after mile after mile of stop-and-go bumper-to-bumper traffic creeping and crawling out of Disney northbound home from the holiday, clogging the northbound lanes on both the Turnpike and on I-75 from north of Gainesville all the way south to the Orlando exits. Not this trip but one of these days I may r...

Tampering, fidgety, always tampering with something, restive, restless, antsy, always tampering with something. First in my mind the liturgy, the Episcopal Church “tampering with the liturgy” as Malcolm Boyd said it back in the 1970s when General Convention did the Zebra Book and ultimately the 1976/79 BCP to us. Early on, I used to read a periodical or something Malcom Boyd sent out, maybe it was in his critique of the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar . Malcolm Boyd was a character, I miss his cynicism. I remember when his mother took sick and died. I remember when Boyd died. I miss his cynicism.  But tampering, the word, thought, that woke with me from a dream that stirred me to consciousness just after one o’clock this morning. In the dream, tampering with a recipe or something, God tampering, messing with my life such that here I am, when on my own I’d undoubtedly have goofed it all up and ended up in prison or something with this mouth and temper [that thought must have...

Couple of brain things to do today, plus my sadness inevitably sets in when Tass leaves to return home to Tallahassee. Otherwise a Friday of peace and quiet at promise.  Why can’t I be 36 again, a Navy commander managing my career differently. Evidently wanting a second chance at life, woke this morning from a dream in which, confused and greatly mixed feelings, I’d just put on the fourth stripe heading back to WashDC and a new duty station. What’s bothering? Why should Brexit be bothering me, I have no further desire to travel, surely not to relocate? And why should an obscure FoxNews article online this morning bother me, “Vladimir Putin: Russia's border 'doesn't end anywhere’ Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Russia's border "doesn't end anywhere", addressing a televised awards ceremony for geography students. He asked a nine-year-old boy where Russia's border ended and the boy replied ‘at the Bering Strait’. Mr Putin provided his own...

No one need look here for Thanksgiving Day wisdom, I will not, that’s fer sure, that’s fer dang sure. Memories maybe. In my bedroom upstairs, the larger one on the left at the top of the stairs and over the kitchen, delicious aromas wafting up. Turkey roasting, pumpkin pie. Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, a longest weekend, no school until Monday. Cove School. This year Bay District Schools had the week!! Cool outside and okay for going barefoot except that autumn, fall of the year, the chinquapin trees covered the ground with their spiny produce.  Edible, I never ate one, the Indians, Native Americans roasted them, the squirrels ate them. Stepped on and they were bad or worse than stickers, sandspurs. Ours was a yard one had to know where not to walk barefooted.  The cinquapin trees, in which our father had constructed us a small platform dubbed “the treehouse,” disappeared when the garage was built in 1948 to accommodate the new Dodge sedan. Mama ...

Gardenia-est thing I ever heard of, must think they’re running an alphabet kindergarten: list of things to bring onboard the Carnival ship. We’re driving down Saturday, sailing from Port Canaveral on Sunday afternoon, Ray & Britany’s destination wedding cruise. Carnival’s online list of things to pack says if you’re bringing medicine you must bring either the original prescription bottle or a copy of the prescription, I reckon they don’t want octogenarians slipping dope onboard to get high and jump overboard or something. Dope: is that the word anymore? IDK. Evening handful has seven or eight pills in it. Gag. And the weather this morning: freezing outside, 50°F says the weather channel and, worse, “feels like 49”, and all because I complained about the long hot summer, so I complained and this is my payback. Yep, I had it coming but everybody else has to suffer with me. down to 50F already and likely this is only the beginning. Next summer I’m keeping my mouth shut. ...

Gandalf: you shall not pass This was goofy, didn’t work. This morning’s sky is clear, black, beautiful and starry. East to west, papermill, downtown PC, planet, moon, Sirius, Orion, condos on Thomas Drive. Lovely, so I tried a pano shot of all that: nothing, black, zilch. Oh well. We are into the quadrennial political moaning that the party losing the election is done for. “Done for” must be an idiom, native to the language, I know what it means but can’t explain why  http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/done+for After every presidential election all the breast-beating that (fill in name of losing party) did it wrong, are no longer in touch with the people, has dropped into oblivion and will never recover. A month ago it was the Republican party per pundits, pollsters and talking heads, as Hillary, House and Senate headed for a Democratic landslide and decimation of the Republican party. God and the Electorate willing, nobody is done for, and we need at least tw...

Cold out, 43F 46% and what’s to see, Sirius, planet high in the east, no longer keep up but Jupiter? Orion tripped and falling, slanting down toward the west. Jacket time for the walk, knit cap to pull down over the ears. Yesterday also was chilly, enough winter for me, ready for summer again. Warm lemon water, now b&d. And yep, the bed's already made, no getting back in Neither religious nor political, just a musing blog, too often an incoherent stream of consciousness that makes me uneasy to post lest someone discern me too well, or realize now I’m public it’s too late for blackmail, or see it’s Time to Baker me. What’s the gospel for next Sunday, Advent One? Jesus said to the disciples, “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until th...

Sermon by the Reverend Tom Weller in Holy Nativity Episcopal Church, Panama City, Florida on Sunday, November 20, 2016. Last Pentecost: Proper 29, The Reign of our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe.  Luke 23:33-43 W hen they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing." And they cast lots to divide his clothing. The people stood by, watching Jesus on the cross; but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, "He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!" The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, and saying, "If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!" There was also an inscription over him, "This is the King of the Jews." One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, "Are y...

A Song of Creation       Benedicite, omnia opera Domini Invocation O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord; *     praise him and magnify him for ever. O ye angels of the Lord, bless ye the Lord; *     praise him and magnify him for ever. The Cosmic Order O ye heavens, bless ye the Lord; *     O ye waters that be above the firmament, bless ye the Lord; O all ye powers of the Lord, bless ye the Lord; *     praise him and magnify him for ever. O ye sun and moon, bless ye the Lord; *     O ye stars of heaven, bless ye the Lord; O ye showers and dew, bless ye the Lord; *     praise him and magnify him for ever. O ye winds of God, bless ye the Lord; *     O ye fire and heat, bless ye the Lord; O ye winter and summer, bless ye the Lord; *     praise him and magn...

Good morning, self. We, self and I, look to some +Time+ soon and very soon. Happy Holidays, the holiday season has started actually, some schools having Thanksgiving Week off, short cruise after Thanksgiving with a destination wedding party, keep the Xpistos in Xmas till New Years, then soon and very soon that will include seeing my brother’s face again. Lovely out this morning, waning moon high, lighting clouds and the Bay, solitary shrimp boat off 7H, cool breeze. Blue velvet chair in Beck bedroom, browsing the desktop of my old original MacBook to see what I’d left on it before its own semi-retirement like mine. In a 2013 file loaded with miscellaneous cleared from the desktop, a file entitled PICS Special. When both are fading anyway, is there any neural difference between memories and fantasies down roads not taken, when history is all in the mind anyway? Not haunts, but sits there in a back room like Rodin’s Thinker, long dormant then quickens on opening various do...